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This weekly thread will focus on the phrase “The Cruelty Is The Point”, which may take some explanation.
Frequently on Lemmy (and elsewhere), I see the phrase in comment threads. In my experience, it has been referencing any policy that is contrary to a Liberal or Leftist belief that the thread discusses. I have found the phrase when discussing trans issues, housing, taxes, healthcare, abortion, and many more.
This does not mean it doesn’t exist elsewhere, it is simply where I see it since I spend much of my social media time on Lemmy. If your experience differs, please let us know!
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- Do you believe this? If so, why?
- Is it true / false in some or all scenarios?
- Is it with certain groups or regarding certain things?
- Do you feel that speech like this is conducive to fixing societal issues?
- Is what is considered “kind” always the best course of action?
I don’t really believe this is ever true, except insofar as the cruelty accomplishes some goal. Anti-homeless spikes are, in my opinion, cruel- I would prefer we found some way to address homelessness directly instead of hiding the homeless. But the people who installed them, approved the installation, and came up with the idea aren’t trying to be cruel, they’re trying to keep the homeless from being visible in public spaces.
The cruelty isn’t the point, it’s a means of reaching the point.
During the Nanjing Massacre, two officers got into a contest to see who could kill more people with just their swords. They went on a rampage against captured civilians, executing them by sword in a bid to see who would reach a higher body count. This was reported upon in dispatches with all the glee of a sporting match.
What was the “real point” that this cruelty was the means to reaching?
I can find hundreds or thousands of things like this in reading history. Can you find the “real point” behind all of them? Really?
Probably not, although I think Ace is correct that even in the extreme historical examples there is often a “real point”. I probably should have been more clear, but I meant something like “in all the examples I’ve heard of people using this phrase, it didn’t seem true to me.”
“Real point” sounds very … “no true Scotsman”-ish. It sounds like the kind of diversion you use which can be applied to literally every situation. It sounds, in fact, very similar to the COVID-19 deniers saying “they didn’t die of COVID-19, they died with COVID-19”. It’s intrinsically impossible to prove after the fact and is thus a perfect diversion.
When the “real point” from a body of people seems to always, with almost no exception, include cruelty to some target—doubly so when it’s always the same target!—that whole “real point” thing starts to wear thin. It sounds very much like a diversion of a particularly ugly sort: the kind of diversion that people with no skin in the game make while treating human lives as just a data point in an intellectual exercise.
Is my language strong here? Yes. Because I’m in several of the fucking target demographics of much of the “not the real point” cruelty: female, (half-)Asian, and bi. It’s not some hypothetical mental exercise for me when I see one policy after another whose “real point” seems to always be aimed “by coincidence” at me and mine. At women. At visible minorities (Asians—especially the perceived-Chinese—in my case). At the queer community. And I can’t help but be amazed at how these “real points” always seem to have one of a small set of sub-groups in the cross-hairs. But it’s all by coincidence, of course.
The cruelty isn’t the point. It’s just coincidentally always the outcome. Aimed at the same targets. Of course.
Can you give me some examples of things where “cruelty is the point”?
Oh, and, naturally, of course:
“By their fruits shall ye know them,” as the Bible says. You can claim that every one of this (very small sample) list of policies and laws has a “real point” … yet that real point is almost always held to the throat of an out group. Women are too uppity for the modern conservative, so practical biological enslavement is introduced. Not to stop termination of unwanted pregnancies (sex education has been proven time and time and time again to be far more effective at this!, not to mention that the support for the life of the child ends the moment the baby pops out of the mother…), but to keep women where “they belong”: under the thumb of powerful white men. You can claim that all the crime and drug bills are aimed at reducing crime, but the numbers show that these are quite thoroughly debunked as a way of actually reducing crime, and they also show that they’re disproportionately aimed at minorities that, get this, conservative assholes hate, even if the laws’ wording is “neutral”. We’ve seen the “real point” of all these laws and many more, and it points not to “law and order” as the real goal, but rather the control of out-group people through terror. The cruelty is, in fact, the actual point.
It’s all very nice for a white dude to sit there, look at the wording, and treat this as an intellectual exercise. White brodudes hardly ever feel the consequences of these nice intellectual puzzles, after all. Their skin isn’t in the game. “The law’s wording doesn’t reference hatred of minorities or of women, so it must have another point.” But those of us who get that point shoved deep into our body politic while watching it completely bypass white folk and especially white men get the intended message: “fear us and don’t step out of line”.
The cruelty is the point.
I’ll concede on the lynchings and Jim Crow. If the goal is to torture and kill someone then cruelty is obviously the point.
Regarding the rest, and specifically abortion, I think you could still say that it’s not accurate to claim that the cruelty is the point. No (or few) anti-abortion people are anti-abortion specifically to hurt women. They’re trying to stop abortions from happening. Mostly because they think it’s murder, but partially because they think that the risk of pregnancy will stop people from having sex.
If there were a way to stop abortions from happening that (somehow) didn’t place constraints on what women could or couldn’t do with their bodies, and it didn’t conflict with any other beliefs of the anti-abortion people (like sex ed does with Christian morality), they would probably be for it.
The phrase “the cruelty is the point”, to me, implies that the cruelty is the goal. If the people advocating for cruelty would take a non-cruel option that accomplishes the same goal, then the goal wasn’t cruelty.
Again, I say “by their fruits shall ye know them”.
There is always an excuse. There is always a reason. But it’s a staggering coincidence that these excuses and reasons are almost invariably pointed at and/or applied to subgroups who are not in favour: visible minorities, women, LGBTQ+, etc. Where are the policies that accidentally hurt, say, white men? Where are the policies that accidentally inconvenience wealthy people?
No, sorry, I don’t believe in that much coincidence. I know they don’t use the language of hurting visible minorities, women, the queer community, etc. but it completely beggars belief that they don’t a) know what the impact is, and b) want that very impact.
But again, what do I know? I’m just someone with skin in the game. I guess I should defer to the white dude who is my better because he has the clearer view from his purely theoretical stance.
I’m not disputing that minorities and women have been the target of discrimination, but the question is whether the phrase “the cruelty is the point” is accurate. There are obviously times when it is, as in some of the cases you’ve described, but most of the time when I see someone saying “the cruelty is the point”, they’re referring to conservative policies on things like immigration or abortion, which have goals aside from cruelty.
I think that the phrase is often used to demonize conservatives. If the cruelty is the point, then everyone who supports the policy is knowingly cruel and malicious.
I’ll probably be using this as next weeks weekly thread, but I would argue that current immigration policies hurt the non-wealthy which would include any white men who aren’t wealthy. It’s one of the few policies where I don’t agree with any political party.
Not to break into my Econ schooling, but also DEI initiatives, social assistance policies, scholarships, grant funding, many hiring initiatives, and almost everything I experienced in many predominantly non-white countries overseas could be framed as “hurting white men” in the same way the policies you listed above. It really depends on the lens you use to view things.
Most of these (including things you mentioned) are put into place by the wealthy to maintain things as they are, and yes, some white men are wealthy. I’d remove race and sex from things though and draw the battle lines elsewhere, say “gross and abusive amassing of wealth.”
That is an accurate example, but I don’t feel it’s true in every case (or even the majority) where the phrase is used.
For example, many right-wing policies (that I dislike very much) have the phrase in question used in discussions below them. More often than not it’s an ineptness, stupidity, lack of knowledge, or something else cause them to feel that the result would be beneficial. Maybe the intended result is power, or something economic, but it’s NOT them just trying to be mean.
I know you know it, but for anyone reading this… Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
I’ve spoken to plenty of limited-understanding people all over the world. Many of them are broadly kind and well-meaning and brutally misguided people. Many express regret at any cruelty they “had to” do, but felt their goal justified it.
Dismissing it as just being shitty to be shitty is stopping people from addressing the underlying issues in the same way that some would dismiss a drug addict as “just an addict” without thinking about addressing underlying issues.
“He wants to be high because he likes being high.” Well, maybe? But probably not, or at very least there’s way more to it.
Hopefully I didn’t overstep.
Oh, every epithet gets misapplied. “Misgendering is literally violence!” “<insert person mildly conservative> is a literal Nazi!” “<insert ever so slightly social policy> is literally communism!” It is not even slightly surprising to hear that people are misusing “the cruelty is the point”.
I know it does, and that’s a massive pet peeve of mine (if you couldn’t tell from other threads). To be clear pre mini-rant, this isn’t aimed at you, it’s just something that bothers me and I wanted to get it out.
I think clarity and unity of terms use is one of the major issues that need to be addressed, especially now. It’s also one of the reasons I often will add the definition of a term being used in our weekly threads, because I don’t like people claiming to be correct because their “personal definition” obscures the truth. We have words. They are effective, powerful, and can be wielded to great effect. Changing what they mean in order to shock with a worse term is a horrible thing to do and is a dumbing-down that serves to undermine the original definition. It makes communication worse.
I despise forced political movement of words and don’t like turning words into the personal equivalent of morality.